Another evening is announced
by moonlit clouds fused to far-off
crests that rise like a serrated ledge
at the desert's edge.
When those first explorers arrived,
it must have been just like this--
that soft light of night filling
the whole bowl of valley
opening up in front of them, everything
awash with its translucent touch.
Gazing across this great lake
to the emptiness beyond,
how could those pioneers not have felt
blessed by the promise
such a vast expanse suggested?

II

Tonight, I can see the streetlights
of the city spread before me,
the busy interstate unravelling
into the distant desert
as if in an effort to redefine this landscape,
surely reshaping the view
those early settlers knew so well.
A plane's landing light
flinches through cloud cover, descends
over the dark harvest of homes
and businesses that now crowd
the flatlands below,
somehow resembling the uncertain flight
of a firefly as it slowly moves
across frayed shadows of mountains.